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Did LinkedIn Ban Writers from Outbound Linking or is it Just Me?

I normally avoid writing in first person, but this is one of those rare exceptions. As a content marketer I have many writing obligations. One of which is contributing to LinkedIn. Many folks have received invitations and are starting to take advantage of the opportunity. I’ve posted original and syndicated content since receiving an invitation. Their terms of service clearly allows for this. Thirteen posts in and no problems – until today.

After copying and pasting a post that was originally published on Social Media Today in April, everything looked good and ready to publish. I did the customary preview, like always. And to my surprise 100 percent of my link citations were gone. Not just the link itself, but the anchor text of the link. I was forced to retype the words and leave out the links.

Here’s a few of the citation links I put in the editor.

LinkedIn stripped out all of the citations.

When I went back into the editor the anchor text and the links were gone. I had to retype them with no citations.

I tried multiple times and several different techniques to get the links to show up, but nothing worked. This left me scratching my head all morning and wondering what was going on. Here’s what I was thinking:

Is it just me or did LinkedIn eliminate all outbound linking for everyone?

If it is just me, what did I do wrong? Does the word “SEO” trigger the links to shut off?

Maybe their WYSIWYG is on the fritz.

Have I been manually marked as a “link builder?”

Did Matt Cutts spook LinkedIn like he did so many other media outlets with his pronouncement that guest posting was dead?

Next, I did what any contributor would do – search through their help section to seek answers and. . . nothing. Not a mention of citation links anywhere.

What impact will this have?

An article with no outbound links runs contrary to the spirit of the Internet. If writers are unable to link to sources they’ll be forced to cite them like we did in college back in the 90’s. Who wants to do that? If this is now the new standard for everyone I’m afraid LinkedIn’s march to content nirvana may be short lived.

Most content marketers write for a web environment. I’m no exception. If I have to change up how I cite for only one media outlet I’ll likely abandon it. Let’s just hope that this is just a bug that will be fixed soon. Otherwise, we’ll start seeing a slew of complaints online soon.

Have you experienced this problem recently? If you have or haven't please share what you're experiencing below.

I'm having that same problem! I've been guest posting for a few days now and outbound links weren't an issue...and suddenly this morning they are disappearing when I hit publish!

Keep us posted if you find out why this is happening...but it's quite unfortunate that I'm not even into my first week of being allowed to publish and this is happening. Not only doesn't it leave a bad taste but I will definitely be second guessing if I publish any more posts in the future.